May 1996 — Features

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The School Design Model at Brewster Academy: Technology Serving Teaching & Learning

DR. ALAN BAIN, Assistant Headmaster, Brewster Academy, Wolfeboro, N.H

It's a Civil War era newspaper desktop published by everyone in a history class. It's instructions on a whiteboard reminding students to download their homework from BrewsterNet and to share data from a science experiment. It's BrewsterNet bulletin boards with titles like "Kermit," "Rush L," "Cindy Fans" or "I Need a Date." It's "Art'95" -- an online art gallery where the work of students in the computer graphics class is available for the whole community to share via BrewsterNet.

It's chat lines with adolescents talking, maligning each other, and sharing p'etry, book and movie reviews. It's kids in the computer graphics lab putting video portfolios together, develo¼ng animations of basketball games and putting the Brewster handbook into HyperCard. It's students morphing themselves into Forest Gump using the same technology employed by the makers of that film.

It's just about everything you can imagine doing with a computer and a network. It's also broken computers, lost cords, chewing gum in network outlets, challenges and not–;infrequent frustrations.

Technology is taking root in the Brewster culture with an encouraging level of embeddedness. It's part of both the culture and counter culture. Open the "Rush L" bulletin board to find out about counter culture; it's within the limits of decency, but it's also clearly adolescents communicating on the network in the same manner that they would in face–;to–;face groups!

Faculty have observed demonstrable improvement in self-esteem and achievement.

Implementing the program has been both challenging and exhilarating. Teachers have been required to learn over 30 new programs in curriculum, technology, teaching, classroom management and community living. The result was a very challenging first year in the model program, which creates high levels of demand irrespective of prior teaching experience. For those teachers who have the skill, energy and motivation, it has been described as a "career changing experience."

Occupational stress measures completed after the first year of the program indicated that teachers completed the year with stress levels that were within the normal range, although the experience of the second and third years suggest elevated levels for new teachers.